TUESDAY MAY 17, 2022
529 & Speakeasy Promotions & Irrelevant Music Present:
The Body
Midwife | The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir
The Body
The Body is a prolific musical force whose creativity is matched only by the astonishing weight of their sound. Duo Lee Buford and Chip King have established their own musical language that reimagines how rhythm, dynamics, and sonics can shape or dismantle song structure. Over the course of two decades, the duo has consistently challenged assumptions and defied categorization, redefining what it means to be a heavy band. On their new album, The Body are again pushing limits and testing the boundaries of the studio to explore the extremes and microtonality of distortion to find its maximal impact. I’ve Seen All I Need To See is The Body at their most incisively bleak, a towering monolith of noise.
I’ve Seen All I Need To See marks both a return and departure for The Body. In contrast to the electronic-centric instrumentation and production-heavy arrangements of previous albums and Buford’s work in Sightless Pit, this album is focused on their core live sound: Buford’s booming, resolute drums paired with King’s obliterated guitar and howl. Following albums with extensive guest performances and acclaimed collaborations with Thou, Uniform, Full of Hell, and more, I’ve Seen All I Need To See is almost entirely the core duo. Guests vocalist/pianist Chrissy Wolpert and vocalist Ben Eberle are used very sparingly. Course, bristling distortion contorts every instrument, with samples of spoken word, cymbals, toms and King’s already noxious tone emerging from layers of feedback. The myriad of tonal interplays, captured in detail, has a movement all its own. The Body, together with engineer Seth Manchester of Machines With Magnets, capture the complexities of distorted sound in stunning detail. The clarity and the cacophony exceed anything they’ve created before, morphing desolate, festering soundscapes into an exhilarating sonic universe.
The Body is a prolific musical force whose creativity is matched only by the astonishing weight of their sound. Duo Lee Buford and Chip King have established their own musical language that reimagines how rhythm, dynamics, and sonics can shape or dismantle song structure. Over the course of two decades, the duo has consistently challenged assumptions and defied categorization, redefining what it means to be a heavy band. On their new album, The Body are again pushing limits and testing the boundaries of the studio to explore the extremes and microtonality of distortion to find its maximal impact. I’ve Seen All I Need To See is The Body at their most incisively bleak, a towering monolith of noise.
I’ve Seen All I Need To See marks both a return and departure for The Body. In contrast to the electronic-centric instrumentation and production-heavy arrangements of previous albums and Buford’s work in Sightless Pit, this album is focused on their core live sound: Buford’s booming, resolute drums paired with King’s obliterated guitar and howl. Following albums with extensive guest performances and acclaimed collaborations with Thou, Uniform, Full of Hell, and more, I’ve Seen All I Need To See is almost entirely the core duo. Guests vocalist/pianist Chrissy Wolpert and vocalist Ben Eberle are used very sparingly. Course, bristling distortion contorts every instrument, with samples of spoken word, cymbals, toms and King’s already noxious tone emerging from layers of feedback. The myriad of tonal interplays, captured in detail, has a movement all its own. The Body, together with engineer Seth Manchester of Machines With Magnets, capture the complexities of distorted sound in stunning detail. The clarity and the cacophony exceed anything they’ve created before, morphing desolate, festering soundscapes into an exhilarating sonic universe.
Midwife
Midwife is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston. She lives and works in San Miguel, New Mexico by way of Denver, Colorado, where she spent the better half of the past decade developing her experimental pop project. As a self taught guitarist and recording engineer, Midwife explores dark subject matter in her anthemic, soft-gaze hits. Self-described as “Heaven Metal,” or emotive music about devastation - catharsis.
When 2020 began, Johnston had several national and international tours planned, but the pandemic shifted her focus back to recording, and back to her internal landscape. Midwife’s third full length record, Luminol, was written and produced during quarantine.
Luminol is a chemical used by forensic investigators to reveal trace amounts of blood left at a crime scene. When it reacts with blood, luminol emits a chemiluminescent blue glow that can be seen in a darkened room. In the same way this chemical reveals evidence at a scene, Midwife is interested in profound truth - turning trial and tribulation into sources of light.
Luminol navigates themes of incarceration, locus of control, clarity, self harm, confinement, agency, and truth-seeking, all erupting in a bioluminescent Rothko color-field of blue.
The Luminol album cover shows a dark figure standing at the edge of a body of water. It symbolizes the way humanity had been on a precipice throughout 2020, to later find out they had been there all along. Being one of Midwife’s most personal records, Luminol's cover artwork is a picture of Madeline Johnston's mother taken in the 1980’s, when she was the same age as Madeline at the time of recording. By redacting the figure, Johnston hopes that anyone could see themselves there, by the water, as a form leftover when all the elements of their lives are stripped away and what is left is a host.
Luminol features collaborations from Tucker Theodore, Angel Diaz (Vyva Melinkolya), Zachary Cole Smith, Ben Newman, and Colin Caulfield (DIIV), and Dan Barrett (Have A Nice Life).
Midwife is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston. She lives and works in San Miguel, New Mexico by way of Denver, Colorado, where she spent the better half of the past decade developing her experimental pop project. As a self taught guitarist and recording engineer, Midwife explores dark subject matter in her anthemic, soft-gaze hits. Self-described as “Heaven Metal,” or emotive music about devastation - catharsis.
When 2020 began, Johnston had several national and international tours planned, but the pandemic shifted her focus back to recording, and back to her internal landscape. Midwife’s third full length record, Luminol, was written and produced during quarantine.
Luminol is a chemical used by forensic investigators to reveal trace amounts of blood left at a crime scene. When it reacts with blood, luminol emits a chemiluminescent blue glow that can be seen in a darkened room. In the same way this chemical reveals evidence at a scene, Midwife is interested in profound truth - turning trial and tribulation into sources of light.
Luminol navigates themes of incarceration, locus of control, clarity, self harm, confinement, agency, and truth-seeking, all erupting in a bioluminescent Rothko color-field of blue.
The Luminol album cover shows a dark figure standing at the edge of a body of water. It symbolizes the way humanity had been on a precipice throughout 2020, to later find out they had been there all along. Being one of Midwife’s most personal records, Luminol's cover artwork is a picture of Madeline Johnston's mother taken in the 1980’s, when she was the same age as Madeline at the time of recording. By redacting the figure, Johnston hopes that anyone could see themselves there, by the water, as a form leftover when all the elements of their lives are stripped away and what is left is a host.
Luminol features collaborations from Tucker Theodore, Angel Diaz (Vyva Melinkolya), Zachary Cole Smith, Ben Newman, and Colin Caulfield (DIIV), and Dan Barrett (Have A Nice Life).